I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. PGP key here.
These days, I'm a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school.
In the past, I've been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation.
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Facebook Finally Helps Users Avoid Being Tagged in Embarrassing Photos, But Also Expands Who Can Tag

Facebook makes changes to give users more control over content they're tagged in

Facebook announced big changes to its “privacy controls” today. The changes make privacy settings much more like those available on the upstart social network that Google introduced this summer. The new Google Plus-like options for Facebookers include the ability to determine who gets to see various part of your main information page; an easier way for you to see what your profile looks like when viewed by another Facebooker; and the option to review photos you’re tagged in before they actually appear on your profile page. I, for one, can’t believe how long it took to finally make that last option an option, but yes, it’s finally here.

Before this change, if your aunt, for example, had tagged you in a photo that was more revealing than you’d like, and her photo settings were such that anyone could see her photos, and people looked at your page before you saw the photo and had a chance to untag yourself, you might hear about that photo for years afterwards from readers of a popular legal blog you write for. You know, hypothetically. Now, that situation would be prevented by the fact that you’ll be able to review all photos before they’re published to your profile page. Thanks for finally coming around to common sense settings, Facebook.

Facebook did slip in a little surprise that arguably makes the site a less private place. Moving forward, anyone, even non-friends, can tag you in photos and content. That’s a HUGE change to the way Facebook has traditionally operated, and makes the site a lot more like Twitter and Google Plus where you’re able to communicate and interact with people who aren’t in your social circle by choice. Says Facebook:

Tag Who You’re With, or What You Want to Talk About

Before: You could only tag someone if you were friends with them, and you could only tag a Page if you had liked it. This felt broken or awkward if you had a photo album of co-workers and had to become Facebook friends to tag them in the photos.

Going Forward: You can add tags of your friends or anyone else on Facebook. If you are ever tagged by a non-friend, it won’t appear on your profile unless you review and approve the post.

Facebook obviously feels like activity on its site is constrained in comparison to the open dialogue taking place on other networks, where users don’t have to have an established relationship in order to tag people in their photos and posts. Facebook does have a privacy safeguard in place in that you have to approve the content before it shows up on your profile page, but this is yet another step away from being a closed social network where your choices about who you friend determine your experience there. That aspect of Facebook was what initially attracted users to the site.

Despite what some industry watchers have suggested, Larry Magid of the Huffington Post says these changes weren’t made in response to the heat brought by Google Plus:

At first glance it might appear that Facebook is responding to Google+’s use of Circles, which is somewhat like the new inline privacy controls. I might have though that too but I as a member of Facebook’s Safety Advisory Board, I was pre-briefed on these changes, several months before Google launched Google+ so this is clearly not a reaction to Google+ though it makes Facebook’s controls a bit more like those of Google.

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This is a welcome improvement and yet one wonders if Facebook actually enjoys all the slavish attention on its privacy settings, for it means the real privacy issues continue to go un-noticed. The real problem with photo tagging is not occasional embarrassment; rather, it’s that Facebook is amassing a huge biometric database with which they can generate a whole new astral plane of inferences and advertising value. When you tag someone, Facebook generates a biometric template, regardless of whether the tag is visible or not. They don’t tell us about these templates in their Privacy Policy, nor what they might do with them over time. You can remove tags but the templates persist until an extra and non-obvious step is taken. Meanwhile, Facebook appears to be running their templates over the billions of photos in their database — which is how they generate tag suggestions. But at the same time, Facebook is surely creating new linkages (it’s their lifeblood after all). Facial recognition and image analysis allows them to work out where we go, what we do and when and with whom we do it. Facial recognition is the exemplar of Facebook’s unfair bargain for our Personal Information. By having people tag one another all over the place, Facebook is crowd-sourcing the training of their biometric algorithms, without giving the slightest hint of the enormous new value they’re generating from what used to be innocent snapshots. Stephen Wilson, Lockstep, Australia.